ArticleNature ecology & evolution2021
Coexistence holes characterize the assembly and disassembly of multispecies systems.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Multispecies Coexistence Emerges From Pairwise Exclusions in Communities With Competitive Hierarchy.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Mechanisms promoting biodiversity in ecosystems.Quantitative biology (Beijing, China) · 2025Review
- Interactions-based classification of a single microbial sample.Cell reports methods · 2024Article
- Assembly archetypes in ecological communities.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Resource competition can explain simplicity in microbial community assembly.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Competition contributes to both warm and cool range edges.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Coexistence holes fill a gap in community assembly theory.Nature ecology & evolution · 2021Article
- Multi-Replicated Enrichment Communities as a Model System in Microbial Ecology.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Review
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A central goal of ecological research has been to understand the limits on the maximum number of species that can coexist under given constraints. However, we know little about the assembly and disassembly processes under which a community can reach such a maximum number, or whether this number is in fact attainable in practice. This limitation is partly due to the challenge of performing experimental work and partly due to the lack of a formalism under which one can systematically study such processes. Here, we introduce a formalism based on algebraic topology and homology theory to study the space of species coexistence formed by a given pool of species. We show that this space is characterized by ubiquitous discontinuities that we call coexistence holes (that is, empty spaces surrounded by filled space). Using theoretical and experimental systems, we provide direct evidence showing that these coexistence holes do not occur arbitrarily-their diversity is constrained by the internal structure of species interactions and their frequency can be explained by the external factors acting on these systems. Our work suggests that the assembly and disassembly of ecological systems is a discontinuous process that tends to obey regularities.
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Registered trials
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